minding the gap

     It’s 2021, as if you didn’t know, and what a journey 2020 has been to get here. The time’s been both contracted and protracted, now we’re suddenly four months into this year and I’ve just realised how much has already gone.

     I felt it was time to catch up on my blogging here, and you, lovely readers, that’s if you’re still out there. So much has happened and is still happening to everyone it’s been too easy to get lost or mislaid in the noise of it all. RL (real life) time seems to have collided with SL (Second Life) time.

      For me, SL has always seemed to exist within its own clock, its own chronology, with usually more time passing there than actually had in the real world. Like dog years, a year in SL can feel like seven. Perhaps not as much as that but maybe you get the idea, that sense that you can live that many years in a mere actual 12 months- not only virtual characters and lives but virtual time.

      Second Life is a bubble into which whenever we log in we penetrate like tiny needles each time, not enough to pop it though. Or maybe it’s more like a virus, being absorbed while its integrity remains intact and like a virus we have an impact on events and actions which might result in changes or ripples for good or for bad. Oddly enough we never leave actual footprints for virtual archaeologists to find in the future.

      Well, I’m feeling very philosophical today, but in truth I’ve always been like this, thinking too much, a pocket philosopher (after all, I’m not very tall, in RL or SL). In SL we’re immortal, or think we are. I’ve known inworlders (SL players) who have vanished without a trace and live on only in my memory, not anymore even a profile. As we in RL return to dust, in SL we revert to pixels, maybe to be recycled, reused, becoming ‘preloved’, or even discarded into those vast oceans that exist between sims into which we aren’t allowed access, through which we have to ‘hop’, or teleport. They are the forbidden lands, lands of water, we’re tantalizingly teased but aren’t given the keys to unlock, or touch it, feel it, interact with it in any way.

      It is the nowhere, a final frontier. I think they should open them up, find a way, find the key. The future of SL I believe is there, joining the dots, so to speak. Then we could walk or swim or fly, take a train, drive a car, ride a bike between Sims, perhaps in glass bridges, causeways, following buoys or wandering stars, feel a freedom we’ve not yet been given inworld. I don’t think they’re reading this, those Linden gods, but if they were, that would be my suggestion.

 © Anan Eebus

further isolation tales

Isn’t it strange how some in SL just want to mimic exactly what’s happening in RL, which I find a bit baffling as I see SL more like a bit of an escape, of a sorts, or a holiday from it.

I think the oddest thing lately is facemasks. I don’t enjoy wearing them in RL even though in some circumstances in these times of lockdown and Covid and social-distancing I have too, so why would I wear one in SL, especially as virtual worlds are pretty much the only place on the planet, apart from Antarctica, where there is no coronavirus. We should revel in that freedom to move, explore, mingle, ‘touch’, not have to socially-distant and not get locked down there too.

Although there are times in SL when one feels incredibly isolated, exploring lands where there is not a soul, or at best some mannequins or bots, but no actual ‘real’ people. It’s eerie, although it can be fascinating too traversing these shadow lands, dusty corners, forgotten swathes. Apart from ‘abandoned land’ it’s obvious someone somewhere is paying for it and yet there’s no sign of life, activity or anything. This is when it really feels dystopian, even more so than those sims that actually are meant to be and designed specially as a dystopian-theme. It’s these accidental and inadvertent ones that truly have an atmosphere and ambience of some kind of nowhere, end of the world scenario, probably because they weren’t intended to be so. They sit like a shock on the landscape, a moment frozen in the last moment anyone spent there, an intimate anonymity.

I still wish we could travel between sims without having to teleport, to actually, walk, or drive, or fly, or sail. I know this can be done with many on the mainland where they are joined together, but, there are still what feel like huge expanses of nothingness, impassable. What a shame they aren’t connected by the same sea and sky, because if they were then any new sims could appear tectonic-like kind of simulating volcanic activity, as in Iceland, throwing up new land in dramatic ways.

I suppose that’s probably a bit too much to ask of SL, who seem a bit stuck in their ways and still mostly unimaginatively focused on making money rather than making experiences. We may have funky new skins and mesh Christmas pubic hair (it’s absolutely true, the other day I found this for sale!) but the ground on which we stand still seems stuck in its ways.

I am still here though, isolated and not, still me, still looking like me, not yet turned into a dragon or a walking tree, still got blue hair as I have had from my very SL birth, pretty much, give or take a week, and here I still am, gosh, how many years later? Over 12 years! Madness!

 © Anan Eebus

more isolation tales

It’s not all fun you know, lockdown. Not that you probably think it is either, but it’s necessary, for sure, But even at times like these we still only have a habit of putting the best of ourselves online and neglecting to share the rest.

Although you most probably don’t really want to know about such things as I just washed the dishes, or vacuumed the stairs, or replaced a bulb in the bedside lamp yes I am quite handy to have around sometimes. Nor how long I been staring at trees watching leaves unfurl or the times, a lot actually, when I flop on the bed utterly fatigued at the end, or sometimes middle, of a day drinking in the lack of scenic views my ceiling offers It’s not overly interesting either knowing what comfort food I’ve just made for lunch, though I have just baked the most brilliant pudding that will last me days.

You definitely don’t want to know the times I feel utterly useless, or when I almost scream, missing the university atmosphere, even the lectures, the library, coffee shops, my life-class modelling work, which pays when I do it and not when I don’t, so a loss of income there. That kind of ‘when will it end’-feeling just sometimes overwhelms. You won’t want to know about the angst I can go through choosing which socks to wear that day nor how slowly I can eat chocolate trying, trying, trying to make it last as long as I possibly can while fighting my instinct to gobble it all down within minutes. I’m right-handed, which isn’t very interest either, see more mundane stuff, and apparently I have a pretty good left-hook, I’m told. Not an actual hook, I’m not a Peter Pan pirate.

When I get low I really get low, like lower than a worm burrowing as fast as they can to escape a hungry birds beak. Though I full-well know everyone does to different degrees for sure. Sometimes it feels like we are all being consumed by social-distancing and self-isolation, our chatter, our behaviour, the headlines, the advice, social media, all reminding us to stay away from each other. Of course, it’s all for good reasons but it doesn’t stop it feeling draining. You definitely don’t want a blow-by-blow wordy account of me crying here online just with the effort of everything.

Keeping physically busy helps, as a Covid Volunteer, for instance, and active with exercise, yoga, running, all obvious mindful stuff to do to stay sane but in the end it can’t stop the brain mulling over it all, especially when waking up in the middle of the night wondering if you spent the last few hours asleep holding your breath, all so seriously disorienting.

I always remind myself however bad a day I’m having, someone is having it worse, far worse. Sometimes that doesn’t really help to know or even tell yourself that, but it’s true for certain.

Off to make dinner now, probably a spaghetti thing, which again is probably something of totally no interest to you. Hugs, stay safe and home and keep sane, or sort of.

~x

another isolation tale

I think I’ll self-isolate. . . . . . . . .
in SL!

Seems to me a much safer place to be at the moment, but would you believe it, there are even people here exploiting the virus for personal financial gain, selling products with the word coronavirus to make money. I mean, really, how cynical. I suppose we don’t need to buy them, but really for it to be in the true spirit of things then maybe all virus-related products should be free to encourage looking out for and looking after each other.

Or maybe, horribly, this is reflecting real life and all the greediness of it. Which is sad but out of my hands. Itis as bad as people stock-piling and hoarding toilets rolls, and who would’ve thought of all things that would be fought over come the apocalypse, it wouldn’t be oil or gold or water or even land, but toilet rolls! It’s totally mind-boggling. Again, luckily here in SL we don’t actually need toilet rolls either.

Anyway, I am sort of semi-self-isolating in RL though this has impacted on my studies which are all only now entirely online and my part-time work as an artist model for life-classes, which means no extra income. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, I feel perfectly fine going anywhere I like in SL and doing anything I want. Even without a mask. Not that a mask really helps at all, but I suppose it makes some people feel better, like some kind of security blanket.

Anyway, I thought a lighthouse would be the best place to do it, on a rock off the coast with only birds and seals for company, and an endless supply of coffee (I made sure of that). Hopefully it won’t be toooooooooooo long as seagulls aren’t the best conversationalists.

 © Anan Eebus ~x

isolation tales

That’s one really good thing about SL: you can’t get ill, no matter what you do, it’s all bacteria and virus-free, not even the coronavirus can get you here. Of course another kind can, a computer one, but that’s not really a virus, that’s just some coding chicanery which even though can really frustrate you can’t actually make you sick.

You can even fall from a great height here and ta-daa! No cuts, bruises, no broken bones, not even death, and we all know how inconvenient death can be. Well, we don’t actually, we can guess though that it would be mighty annoying. You simply dust yourself off and walk away, or go back up and do it all over again. If only real life was like that. Nor do we have to deal with those really piss-me-off niggles as sneezing or runny noses or wracking coughs or even itches. Mind you, I think itches can be handy, as long as they can be scratched away with some judiciously and well-targeted fingertips.

So, whoever said virtual worlds were a waste of time should try it, it’s quite handy finding somewhere no one or nothing can actually hurt you. That is, as long as you don’t take it too seriously, after all, it is supposed to be escapism, a place to put distance between you and the outside world, being kind of a pixelised extension of your inner world.

What best of all though is in SL you never ever, ever have to use the toilet: ever! While at the same time not worrying about being constipated or having diarrhoea, or exploding! Surely that’s a good thing, especially the not exploding. And, finally, for us girls, no periods. Hurrah! Among other things of course. I know there’s a good side to them as well but really, some days I think nature pulled a fast one on us.

Nevertheless, I still it’s important to keep up ones vitamin C so, even in SL, you’ll sometimes find me filling my face with grapes.

© Anan Eebus